Alphabet (Google) at PPFCF

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Alphabet Inc., the parent holding company of Google, has been one of the most enduring international positions in the Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund (PPFCF). It was among the first foreign-listed equities held by the scheme after its launch in May 2013, when the fund still carried the name Parag Parikh Long Term Value Fund (PPLTVF). The position became a foundational template for PPFAS Mutual Fund’s international-diversification strategy and remains a cornerstone of the fund’s foreign-equity sleeve.

Alphabet’s persistence in PPFCF illustrates several doctrines articulated by Rajeev Thakkar, Chief Investment Officer (Equity) of PPFAS Asset Management Private Limited, and Raunak Onkar, the co-fund manager and head of research who tracks technology sectors. The stock combined a dominant search-advertising franchise, a long runway in digital media and a balance sheet that allowed it to invest aggressively in cloud computing and artificial intelligence. For a scheme designed around PPFAS investment philosophy tenets of margin of safety and long-term ownership, Alphabet was an early demonstration that high-quality global compounders could be acquired through the Indian mutual fund wrapper at reasonable valuations.

During one disclosure period in 2025 Alphabet was the third-largest equity holding in PPFCF at approximately 7.08 per cent of net assets, alongside Amazon at PPFCF at 8.51 per cent and ITC at PPFCF at 7.99 per cent. By the April 2026 factsheet domestic banking, power transmission and coal-mining holdings had risen to the top three slots, but Alphabet continued as a top-ten holding within the international diversification at PPFAS allocation.

This article documents Alphabet’s role in PPFCF: the company background, the original investment thesis under PPFAS value investing doctrine, the position history through the February 2022 SEBI/RBI overseas cap, and the contemporary positioning of the holding in a fund that crossed Rs 1.6 lakh crore in PPFCF AUM trajectory by May 2026.

Company background

Alphabet Inc. is a Delaware-incorporated holding company created in October 2015 through a corporate reorganisation of Google Inc. The reorganisation separated the core Google Services and Google Cloud businesses from the longer-horizon “Other Bets” projects such as Waymo, Verily and DeepMind. Alphabet’s Class A common stock trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker GOOGL and the Class C non-voting shares under GOOG. The underlying Google business was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in September 1998 and listed on Nasdaq in August 2004 through a Dutch auction initial public offering.

Alphabet’s primary revenue engine is Google Services, comprising Google Search and other advertising properties, YouTube advertising and subscriptions, Android, Chrome, the Play Store and Google’s hardware portfolio. Google Cloud has emerged as a significant secondary segment, competing with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The Other Bets segment houses autonomous-driving subsidiary Waymo, healthcare-focused Verily and several smaller ventures.

The official Alphabet investor-relations website is abc.xyz and the consumer-facing Google site is google.com. Sundar Pichai has served as chief executive officer of Google since 2015 and of Alphabet since December 2019. The board has historically retained Larry Page and Sergey Brin as controlling shareholders through high-vote Class B shares.

For Indian retail investors, direct ownership of Alphabet stock requires a foreign portfolio investor intermediation route or Liberalised Remittance Scheme outbound remittance under FEMA rules. The PPFCF route delivers indirect exposure through a SEBI Mutual Funds Regulations 1996-registered Indian scheme, taxed under the equity mutual fund taxation in India regime so long as PPFCF retains at least 65 per cent in Indian equities.

Investment thesis at PPFCF

When PPLTVF launched on 24 May 2013, Rajeev Thakkar and Raunak Onkar had articulated a thesis that combined international diversification with a strict value discipline. Google (later Alphabet) fitted the template on multiple counts.

First, the search-advertising franchise enjoyed a near-monopoly economic position. Google’s share of global search queries had crossed 90 per cent and the advertising auction model produced consistently high incremental margins. For a fund team trained in Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett value investing, the combination of a dominant market position, durable network effects and pricing power was the textbook definition of an economic moat.

Second, valuation. Despite its size and growth profile, Google traded at price-to-earnings multiples that PPFAS considered reasonable through much of the 2013 to 2018 period, particularly when adjusted for the substantial net cash position and the optionality of Google Cloud, YouTube and Other Bets. This was consistent with the PPFAS margin of safety discipline that requires a quantitative buffer between price and intrinsic value.

Third, the PPFAS focused portfolio discipline that holds 25 to 35 securities required each new addition to clear a high quality bar. Alphabet’s free cash flow conversion, return on invested capital and balance-sheet flexibility cleared the bar comfortably. The fund team has often referenced Alphabet as an example of a global compounder available at multiples below those of mid-cap Indian consumer franchises.

Fourth, the strategy of holding foreign securities was, and remains, a structural diversification tool. Indian household portfolios are concentrated in domestic equities and real estate. By offering up to 35 per cent overseas exposure through a domestic mutual fund wrapper, PPFCF gave Indian unit-holders access to global technology leaders without the operational burden of overseas brokerage, custody and currency management.

Fifth, the PPFAS tax-aware portfolio management discipline favoured low-turnover holdings to defer long-term capital gains. Alphabet’s quality and the team’s conviction supported multi-year ownership, and the position has remained even through valuation expansion episodes.

Position history

Alphabet (then Google) entered PPLTVF in the early months after the scheme’s May 2013 launch and quickly became one of the larger international positions. Through the 2013 to 2017 period the foreign sleeve of PPLTVF grew steadily as the fund manager team built positions in Microsoft at PPFCF, Amazon at PPFCF, Meta Platforms at PPFCF and Berkshire Hathaway class B at PPFCF (historic), with Alphabet typically appearing among the top three foreign holdings.

The 2018 SEBI scheme rationalisation, which led to the renaming of PPLTVF as Parag Parikh Long Term Equity Fund on 16 February 2018, did not affect the Alphabet position because the fund retained its multi-cap mandate. The January 2021 transition to the flexi-cap mutual fund in India category preserved the up-to-35 per cent overseas allocation as well.

The February 2022 episode was the most consequential single event in the position’s history. The industry-wide RBI ceiling on overseas mutual-fund investments of USD 7 billion was breached, and the SEBI MF overseas investment cap freeze prompted PPFAS to suspend lump-sum and fresh SIP/STP registrations in PPFCF from 2 February 2022. At that point foreign securities accounted for approximately 28 per cent of PPFCF’s roughly Rs 5,588 crore in overseas holdings. SEBI permitted partial resumption from 17 June 2022 up to headroom available as on 1 February 2022. Since then, with PPFCF’s domestic AUM growing rapidly, the proportional weight of Alphabet (and the foreign sleeve generally) has compressed in percentage terms even as the rupee value of the holding has been stable to higher.

By the disclosure period in 2025 when Alphabet, Amazon and ITC clustered as the three largest holdings, Alphabet stood at 7.08 per cent. Through 2026 the relative ranking shifted as domestic financials and PSU positions rose, but Alphabet has continued to be one of the larger foreign holdings reported in the monthly factsheet archive at amc.ppfas.com.

Recent positioning

The April 2026 PPFCF factsheet, when AUM reached Rs 1,40,949 crore (up 9.29 per cent month-on-month from Rs 1,28,966 crore in March), showed HDFC Bank at PPFCF at 7.94 per cent, Power Grid Corporation at PPFCF at 6.99 per cent and Coal India at PPFCF at 5.95 per cent as the top three. Within this configuration Alphabet remained a meaningful component of the international sleeve, which sat in the 11 to 16 per cent zone of the portfolio post the 2022 cap freeze.

In monthly factsheet commentary, Rajeev Thakkar and Neil Parag Parikh, Chairman and CEO of the AMC, have repeatedly described foreign exposure as both a diversification and a quality tool. Alphabet’s free cash flow generation, its evolving AI strategy following the launch of Bard and Gemini, and its dominance in Search and YouTube have continued to anchor that argument. The fund team has avoided making sharp directional calls during periods of antitrust scrutiny or AI-cycle volatility, preferring to maintain the holding consistent with the PPFAS contrarian investing and long-horizon doctrine.

The May 2026 commentary on the fund holding around 18 to 22 per cent in PPFAS cash holdings reflected valuation caution across both Indian and foreign markets, but the team has not signalled an exit from core foreign positions such as Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon or Meta. Instead, the cash sleeve has functioned as the marginal allocation tool while quality compounders are retained.

Comparison with peer holdings

Within PPFCF’s international sleeve, Alphabet sits alongside Microsoft, Amazon and Meta as the four global technology anchors. Each was added during the early PPLTVF years and each has survived the 2022 cap freeze, although periodic trimming has occurred. Berkshire Hathaway class B at PPFCF (historic) appeared in older factsheets and reflected the symbolic alignment with the Buffett-Munger heritage that infused Parag Parikh’s investing approach.

Relative to Microsoft, Alphabet has typically traded at lower P/E multiples and offered more direct exposure to digital advertising. Relative to Amazon, Alphabet provides a stronger high-margin advertising base and a more concentrated balance-sheet profile. Relative to Meta, Alphabet’s monetisation across search, video and Android is broader and arguably more durable. Within the PPFAS focused portfolio, each anchor brings distinct underlying drivers.

Compared with domestic positions such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, ITC, Bajaj Holdings, Power Grid Corporation and Coal India, Alphabet provides exposure to a different economic complex (US technology and global digital advertising) and a different currency (US dollar revenue). The combination is consistent with PPFAS’s argument that Indian portfolios benefit from access to dollar-revenue businesses through a domestic equity-oriented mutual fund.

Context within PPFCF

PPFCF was launched on 24 May 2013 as PPLTVF, renamed Parag Parikh Long Term Equity Fund on 16 February 2018 and renamed Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund on 13 January 2021. The scheme is benchmarked against the Nifty 500 TRI and has delivered CAGR since inception of approximately 19.06 per cent against a category average of 15.22 per cent and the Nifty 500 TRI at 12.4 per cent. AUM crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in May 2025, making PPFCF the first active equity mutual fund scheme in India to do so, and rose to roughly Rs 1.6 lakh crore by 15 May 2026.

The fund is managed by Rajeev Thakkar along with Raunak Onkar, Raj Mehta, Rukun Tarachandani and other team members. Parag Parikh, the founder of the Parag Parikh Financial Advisory Services Limited sponsor entity, established the investing house in 1979 and incorporated PPFAS Ltd in December 1992. The mutual fund was set up with SEBI on 10 October 2012 under registration ID MF/069/12/01.

Alphabet’s role in PPFCF has also been a recurring topic at the annual unitholders’ meet, the Indian mutual fund industry’s nearest analogue to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual General Meeting. The 12th edition was held on 22 November 2025 at Birla Matushree Sabhaghar in Mumbai. The format includes unit-holder questions on individual holdings, and Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon are perennially among the most discussed.

See also

External references

References

  1. PPFAS Mutual Fund, October 2025 factsheet, amc.ppfas.com.
  2. PPFAS Mutual Fund, March 2026 factsheet, amc.ppfas.com.
  3. PrimeInvestor, “An update on Parag Parikh Flexi Cap,” primeinvestor.in.
  4. INDmoney, “PPFAS Flexi Cap April 2026 portfolio update,” indmoney.com.
  5. Outlook Business, PPFAS February 2022 suspension report, outlookbusiness.com.
  6. Angel One, “Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund crosses one lakh crore AUM,” angelone.in.
  7. Business Today, May 2026 cash commentary, businesstoday.in.
  8. Alphabet Inc., 2024 Annual Report, abc.xyz/investor.

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